Friction of flat and micropatterned interfaces with nanoscale roughness

The dry friction of surfaces with nanoscale roughness and the possibility of using micropatterning to tailorfriction by manipulating contact area is investigated. Square wave patterns produced on samplesfrom silicon wafers (and their unstructured equivalent) were slid against unstructured siliconcountersurfaces. The width of the square wave features was adjusted to vary the apparent featurecontact area. The existence of nanoscale roughness was sufficient to ensure Amontons’ first law (F =µP) on both structured & unstructured samples. Somewhat counterintuitively, friction wasindependent of the apparent feature contact area making it difficult to tailor friction via the feature contact area. This occurred because, even though the apparent feature contact area was adjusted,the surface roughness and nominal flatness at the contact interface was preserved ensuring that thereal contact area and thereby the friction, were likewise preserved. This is an interesting special case,but not universally applicable: friction can indeed be adjusted by structuring provided the intervention leads to a change in real contact area (or interlocking)– and this depends on the specific surface geometry and topography.